Melbourne multi-millionaire Mike Sentonas, President of CrowdStrike, has found himself at the centre of a global tech failure that crippled business and government operations worldwide.
The outage caused by a security update failure, impacted major industries, including banks, casinos, media companies and airlines.
The outage hit an estimated 8.5 million Windows devices worldwide.
Sentonas, worth an estimated $225 million, is a leading figure in the tech world and a cybersecurity veteran with over 20 years of experience.
He completed his computer science degree at Edith Cowan University and became President of CrowdStrike in 2023.
CrowdStrike, founded by George Kurtz, Dmitri Alperovitch, and Greg Marston in 2011, is a major player in the cybersecurity market, with annual revenues exceeding $3 billion.
CrowdStrike’s Sydney office remained empty for hours after the outage began at 2.30pm on Friday, with staff working from home.
The global IT outage, caused by a logic flaw in a software update, hobbled banks, airlines, supermarkets, and media organizations.
The full cost of the outage is difficult to quantify, but experts estimate the impact on businesses globally at over $1 billion.
In New South Wales alone, the bill could top $200 million, according to Business NSW.
Mike Sentonas, the Greek Aussie at the top of US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike
Mike Sentonas apologised for the disruption.
“We understand the disruption and the distress that we caused a lot of people. We put out an update, which we do regularly and we’ve been doing for over a decade, and we got this very wrong,” he said.
Sentonas acknowledged that compensation for impacted businesses will have to be discussed.
“Those conversations have to happen and will happen,” he said, noting that this phase will come after ensuring customers are back up and running.
Airline Jetstar was particularly hard hit, with hundreds of canceled flights leaving thousands of customers stranded.
Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox mentioned the uncertainty about whether businesses would be able to seek compensation from CrowdStrike or through a government redress scheme.
“It’s impacted different businesses and different sectors of the economy in wildly different ways, and the reality is we’re going to be seeing the tailpipe of this for weeks to come,” Willox told ABC News.
The fallout for CrowdStrike is expected to be lengthy and costly. The company’s share price has plummeted by more than 30 per cent since the outage, erasing billions of dollars from its market value. Pressure is mounting on CEO George Kurtz to testify before the US Congress, with potential regulatory or punitive action on the horizon.
Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil remarked that the outage was likely the largest in history.
CrowdStrike, headquartered in Austin, Texas, reports an annual revenue of over $3 billion.
It was made famous when the company confirmed Russia had hacked the US Democratic National Committee in 2015 and 2016.
The company is now actively working with customers impacted by the defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.
CrowdStrike’s statement stressed that this issue was not a security incident or cyber attack.
The defect has been identified, isolated, and a fix has been deployed.
The company continues to provide complete and continuous updates through official channels.
*with AAP, Saturday Telegraph
